From NYTImes.com: Responding to domestic and international criticism of its extensive use of capital punishment, China adopted new rules on Tuesday requiring review of all death sentences by the Supreme People’s Court, state news media reported.

China executes more people every year than all other nations combined, by some Chinese estimates, up to 10,000 a year. Chinese courts have been embarrassed in recent years by a number of executions of people who were later proved innocent.

China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, approved the amendment to the law, which “is believed to be the most important reform of capital punishment in China in more than two decades,” the official New China News Agency said in a brief report.

The state news media have estimated that the number of executions could drop by as much as 30 percent under the new system, though they have not said how they arrived at that figure.